This third in Channel Classics' "Composers from Theresienstadt" series is perhaps the most valuable thus far.

Born in Prague in 1899, Hans Krasa was a Czechoslovak composer who, as a Jew, spent the final two years of his life in the prison camp of Terezin (or Theresienstadt, as the Nazis called it). He died in the gas chambers of Auschwitz in 1944. Several of these chamber works actually were written during Krasa's internment and were first played by a string quartet consisting of fellow musician-inmates.

Krasa's style, 1920s, owes little to his mentor Alexander Zemlinsky, much more to Stravinsky and the French "Les Six," whose music was then creeping into Czech cultural life. His songs to texts by Rimbaud (in Czech translation), literally written in the shadow of death, make a poignant effect, although the instrumental chamber works reveal his melodic, harmonic and contrapuntal impulse at its most distinctive.

The performances and recorded sound make the best possible case for Krasa's receiving more widespread attention. This music affirms the inextinguishable flame of the human spirit amid the unspeakable horrors of war. My only reservation about the disc is its short (barely 43 minutes) playing time, poor value for a full-priced CD.